The Hornet class heavy fleet carrier HCS Hornet is tecH/Nically a rated warship, capable of serving as the flagship of a major fleet. The ship is capable of deploying not just fighters, but docking, tending, and repairing ships as large as linear accelerator destroyers. However, as a major operations center for the Hornet’s Nest supercorp, the ship rarely sees combat anymore.
The HCS Hornet now serves as the flagship of H/N’s home fleet and houses the majority of the upper echelons of its command staff, political base, and RND capabilities. It acts in place of a “homeworld” for the corporation and enables them to have a mobile base of operations that can outrun both their enemies and the Maelstrom.
Nearly all the amenities expected of a planet can be found aboard, including artificial greenery and other necessities to ensure life remains livable and tolerable for those aboard the ship.
No one exactly remembers where or how Hornet’s Nest began as a corporation. The company has been a fact of life in the galaxy for as long as any of the supercorporations can remember, and most of them are grateful for it. However, achieving that status was a long and bloody journey.
Hornet’s Nest is an amalgamation of countless other smaller PMCs, brought to heel by buyout or forceful pacification by the super corporation. H/N’s quest to dominate the security industry led to them absorbing countless smaller organizations, often leaving the remnants of the bloody conflict behind both in destruction and in the culture of the organization.
Of all of H/N’s bloody feuds, none are quite as famous as their conflict with Nine Lives Logistics . Like many other conflicts Hornet’s Nest has fought, the true origin of their feud is old enough that no one remembers what truly started it. In the modern day, conflict between the two supercorporations manifests as an ideological difference between a company built on saving lives and a company built on taking them.
On the whole, however, Hornet’s Nest maintains a neutral position with most of the other super corps. Providing security for nearly every corp inevitably means cutting deals with nearly every corp. In fact, it isn’t unheard of for contracted Hornet’s Nest forces to end up on both sides of a conflict in one capacity or another.
One of the more notable shake-ups in the recent History of Hornet’s Nest was the takeover of the HCS Hornet, and subsequently H/N as a whole, by CMDT Koshak. Koshak is a radical member of an upstart religion, the Cult of the Helljumpers, which is founded on the idea that a woman known as “The Commander” or “The Queen of Battle” will in the near future lead her faithful, her soldiers, in a physical war against the Maelstrom to conquer it and halt its advance.
In a conflict known as the Forty Eight Hour War, Koshak and other members of Hornet’s nest, primarily motivated by a general sentiment that the various highly trained forces of Hornet’s Nest were being left on the sidelines in the conflict against the Maelstrom, attacked loyalist H/N forces and seized control of the HCS Hornet and its support vessels. They demanded the surrender of the remainder of the corporation, the immediate return of all Hornet’s Nest forces to a higher degree of readiness, and a greater focus on operations within territory threatened by the Maelstrom. Their demands were accepted; due to the task-organized nature of most H/N forces outside the home fleet, no other force within Hornet’s Nest was powerful enough to dislodge them. In a post-Forty-Eight Hour War world, Hornet’s Nest is somehow on more of a war footing than ever.
The foundations of Hornet’s Nest are military culture and discipline. Children born into the corporation, even its upper echelons, are prepared for war from a young age using various indoctrination tecH/Niques. Games are structured to enforce military hierarchy, and weapons and martial arts training are common. It is not uncommon for proper military training to start very young, especially for the elite who are expected to fill officer roles or those fast tracked for Away Teams and other special operations forces.
While the exact age that training begins varies wildly based on how various lineages experience time, the children of the nobility will typically begin learning drill and ceremony extremely young. Their teenage years will be filled with basic training, and their “high school” age will begin more specialized training like VBSS or tactical air and space control party training. Additional training will continue well into their adulthood, but this is done as a way to give them a solid foundation for leadership and military bearing.
For those not born into the corp, adapting to the lifestyle can be difficult. A lifetime of brutal training is condensed into a short period of time via the use of virtual reality simulations augmented with neural links that can warp the perception of time for the recruit and give them the feeling of having experienced years of time with the corp over the course of mere months. Ultimately, they are expected to become as much of a part of the same whole as any other drone: a cog in a much larger machine.
Constructs are an extremely common sight in the battlefield ranks of Hornet’s Nest, largely for their eidetic memory that aids in assimilating to the Hornet’s Nest culture. Additionally, many construct models boast exceptional resilience in combat, a trait prized in a supercorp that is often on the front lines of conflict. Less combat-oriented models are frequently assigned to officers, especially elven officers, due to their enhanced tecH/Nical capabilities and their value as adjutants.
At the top of the fleet structure of H/N is the Home fleet, consisting of the HCS Hornet as its flagship along with a contingent of heavy battleships, escort destroyers, and fleet-tending support craft. Together they make up both a lethal battle group and space-borne mobile society, functioning as the center of H/N’s political, military, and cultural base.